Spiral is a set of apps for collaborative learning and improved formative assessment in schools. The UCL IOE team (Mina Vasalou, Martin Oliver, Wayne Holmes and Katerina Avramides) were involved in supporting the design and evaluation of the apps.

The SafeReads project aimed to produce a conceptual design and low fidelity prototypes of a productivity tool for children with dyslexia transitioning from Key Stage 2 to 3 (ages 8-14). The tool was designed to provide compensatory strategies, remediation strategies and alternative ways of accessing meaning from text. Projects co-investigators were Yvonne Griffiths (University of Leeds), Kaska Poryaska-Pomsta (UCL Knowledge Lab) and Dolphin Assistive Technologies.

The aim of iLearnRW was to develop an integrated learning technology, a Reader and a game, which together assisted children with dyslexia in their reading in formal education contexts in Greece and the UK. iLearnRW was driven by a user profile that provided children with appropriate personalised content to address their specific learning difficulties. The design was a collaboration between dyslexia experts, interaction designers, developers, teachers and children.

The main goal of juxtalearn was to research, develop and evaluate a pedagogical and technological framework that facilitated the personalised juxtaposition of ‘threshold concepts’ and solidified the new associations learners create through personal and shared reflective performances within formal education settings. The project identified students’ personal conceptual barriers in order to personalise their learning experience. Students’ understanding of each problematic concept was enhanced through conceptual blending. The output of the learning process was a video created by each student to explicate their understanding that can be shared with others through public displays and networked displays supporting further curiosity and creativity in a student’s performance.

EMOTE’s goal was to build an empathic robot that fosters learning. The project was concerned with how the exchange of socio-emotional cues with an embodied tutor in a shared physical space created a sense of connection and social bonding and if this fostered more meaningful learning experiences. EMOTE developed a showcase in the area of geography, focusing on environmental issues tested in real world school environments in three European countries.

Technology users are constantly faced with having to understand and respond to new privacy risks. This has fueled a demand for interventions that will raise privacy awareness. Inspired by the potential of text analytics, Privacy Trends was a privacy awareness tool that collected, aggregated and visualized online media articles written and shared by users while a privacy risk or violation occurs.The primary goal of this tool was to facilitate reflection around the broader political, social and economic consequences of privacy infringements.

SIREN was a learning game that teaches late primary school conflict resolution skills. The game was designed to fit with the social and emotional learning curriculum in the UK. It comprised of two mini-games, a peer mediation game called My Dream Theater and a multi-player game called Village Voices. SIREN’s learning content, mechanics and rewards were informed by conflict mediation practice, ethnographic observations of children’s conflict experiences and children’s digital literacy, where we employed observation methods, interviews and participatory design techniques.